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Further Reading

According to the family of an Arizona woman who was killed by a self-driving Uber car last year, the City of Tempe is liable for her death and owes $5 million each to her husband and her daughter.

News of the lawsuit was first reported by the Arizona Republic, which noted that Elaine Herzberg's survivors have previously settled a similar lawsuit with Uber itself.

This case, however, makes the claim that the city was negligent when it set up a median on Mill Avenue—where the accident occurred—that contained an X-shaped "brick pathway cutting through the desert landscaping that is clearly designed to accommodate people to cross at the site of the accident."

After the accident, however, the city changed the design of this portion of the road and removed the pathway. It was replaced with various types of landscaping seemingly designed to discourage jaywalkers.

Nikki Ripley, a Tempe spokeswoman, did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment. She also declined to comment on the litigation to the Arizona newspaper.

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar